


to kill time (without injuring eternity)

by KL_Morgan



Series: the tonic of wildness [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/F, I called the first one a shot of heartbreak, also adapting canon as it airs is a bit of a high-wire act w/o net, these vignettes will probably continue to grind salt into the wound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5891146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KL_Morgan/pseuds/KL_Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More scenes for the daemon AU, as inspired by the third season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to kill time (without injuring eternity)

Anuael disagrees.

“Send someone she knows,” the daemon says behind her as they descend. “Someone she will recognize as one of yours.”

“You don’t think that will only make her run harder?” 

Anuael hesitates, and it stings when the distance between them pulls. Lexa doesn’t let it hold her back and it grows to a painful wrench before she hears Anuael's hooves hitting down on stone as she catches up. 

“He’s not trustworthy,” the daemon insists. 

“He isn’t. His desperation is.”

“She will know he’s Ice Nation. She’ll be terrified the entire time, she will fight him, he might hurt her --”

“He won’t,” Lexa counters. “He won’t let anyone else take her, either. Bribing or begging won’t work. I am the only person that can give him what he wants. He will do this thing for me, and he will do it exactly as I say.”

“Send out messages instead. Have it known she’ll be given sanctuary if she comes to Polis. Give her a little time --” 

“It’s been _months_ ,” Lexa finds herself shouting, voice ringing off of stone as she turns to face her daemon. Her breathing echoes harshly in the small space. “How much longer can she go on like this?”

The daemon stares back with dark eyes, only the barest twitch of one ear betraying her stillness. 

“At least put that thing back where you found it,” Anuael says quietly. She doesn’t look at what Lexa holds in her right hand. 

When Lexa first heard of the bounty she’d been surrounded: by advisers, generals, petitioners. She’d let ice form on her expression, freezing it, keeping her safe behind a mask. It had been hours more before she could be alone and by then the cold had set in. Anuael had wrapped herself close, hot breath along her face and neck, but nothing helped. Lexa had only been able to clutch at her and shiver, and shiver, and shiver.

Her grip tightens.

“No,” she says, and resumes their journey to the throne room.

 

___________________________

 

“My mother has a remarkable fondness for your little -- friends,” Prince Roan says. He’s still standing where her guards deposited him in the middle of the room. 

“She brought down the Mountain,” Lexa says from her throne. She keeps her tone even, with effort. “She is a formidable get for Queen Nia in her own right.” 

“True.” His face creases with something that’s not quite a smile, and his cicada daemon crawls down over the line of his cheekbone. “But we both know her methods are rarely so straightforward.”

“Clarke,” and she doesn’t think of how long it’s been since she allowed herself to say the name, what it’s like to have it back in her mouth, “is an important ally.”

“Oh, I’ve heard,” Roan rumbles. 

“Do you understand the terms of this deal? Or would you like to return to --”

“Capture the elusive Commander of Death,” he interrupts, “bring her back to Polis, and you will lift my banishment. Simple enough.”

“Good.” She lets her grip on the arms of her throne relax, out of his line of sight.

“Except for her daemon.” He holds up one hand into the air and his daemon buzzes over to land on his knuckles. Every beat of her wings is a glimpse of iridescent shine. “As clever as Ophidre is, I don’t want to risk her against a wolf. Especially if they’re both as wild as rumored.” 

“Laerte will follow Clarke.”

“And if he doesn’t? If he balks, or howls when I need them to be quiet?” He turns his wrist with his daemon’s progress, wiggling his fingers. “It's not like I can lay hands on _him_ ,” he adds with a smirk.

Lexa ignores the goad. Instead she stands, reaching to where she put the instrument behind the throne earlier. As necessary as she knew this to be, some part of her hadn’t wanted Indra or Titus to witness it. If it never has to be used, they will never know it had been a possibility.

She can spare Clarke that.

She swears Roan’s eyes widen when she pulls out the snare pole and that she can hear the beat of Ophidre’s wings speed into a momentary hum. But as she steps down from the dais, holding it in front of her, they both appear unperturbed. 

“Have you used one before?” she asks, drawing up close enough for him to reach out and take it from her. He doesn’t -- he only shakes his head with his eyes still on her face. Ophidre flies to settle at his temple and stare as well.

“The cord goes around the torso -- over the head and one leg. Never around the neck.” She holds the long pole in her right hand and slips the knotted loop around her left, demonstrating how it pulls tighter and tighter until it the weave lies rough and unforgiving against her skin. “Don’t use it to drag,” she says, heart thudding so heavily inside her chest the feeling is almost painful. “It’s for guidance. To show who has control.”

Roan puts out both hands, palms up. Lexa waits for him to take the snare pole from her. When she realizes he won’t, she drops it. The sound it makes when it falls into his hands is too loud in the almost-empty room.

“Remember I want them unharmed,” she says as she turns away. She feels brittle, as if her bones could snap and crumble. Her foot is on the first step of the dais when Roan speaks again.

“Do you know what the most prized quarry was, in the world before? It surprised me: not bears or foxes, not any of the predators. The noblest form of hunting involved the hart. It was the sport of kings,” here he gives the briefest of pauses, “and queens.”

Lexa doesn’t turn, but through the tattered lengths of curtain she sees Anuael’s head come up from where she is standing out on the balcony. She refused to be in the room for this. Now she looks past Lexa to the banished prince, and Lexa can’t tell what she’s thinking.

“It wasn’t the ferocity of the animal that lent the honor, but the difficulty of hunting a monarch in its own land. They thought it ancient and fearless. They would amass weapons and warriors, training dogs and horses for this one pursuit, and then -- do you know how they managed to capture the king of the forest?”

Anuael shifts her gaze to meet Lexa’s eyes. Now she recognizes the expression on the daemon’s face. It’s the one she wears just before putting herself bodily between Lexa and whatever threat lays beyond, or just before she catches Lexa’s clothes between her teeth and drags her back to rational thought. _Lexa_ , is what comes with that expression, _please be careful. Lexa, listen._

“They ran it down. They wouldn’t attack, not directly. They would exhaust the hart until it was forced to turn and defend itself.”

The skin along Lexa’s shoulder blades begins to prickle as Roan speaks. 

“A panicked and desperate animal is a much easier kill.” 

Lexa whirls back around, drawing a sword in the same sweeping motion. She has the blade up by his shoulder and against his throat between the space of breaths. To his credit, Roan doesn’t flinch. 

“If you would make threats against us,” she forces out past gritted teeth, past muscles locked down so hard her jaws might crack, “speak them plainly.”

“No threat, Commander,” he says. “Just a bedtime story I was told many times as a child.” 

 

___________________________

 

Anuael won’t look at her, afterwards. When they retire for the night she pulls at their connection until it twinges, only then settling down with her back to the bed with Lexa in it. Lexa thinks she’s sleeping, and allows herself to drift off as well. 

“You shouldn’t have done that.” 

Neither of them rest easy recently. It only takes the quiet words from the daemon to pull Lexa from the loose hold of her dreams. “It’s done,” she says, just as softly. 

“She’ll hate you. They both will.”

“She already does.” Now Lexa turns her back, rolling over in bed to signal the end of the discussion with, “It doesn't matter, as long as they’re here.”

 _And safe_ , she doesn’t say. It wouldn’t be true, regardless. Danger is a constant, and only one’s relative condition to it is the change: _not here._ Or _not yet._

She winds her fingers into her blankets until her knuckles throb, imagining it’s something of Clarke’s: her clothes, her hair. Anchoring her close even as her hands beat Lexa bloody.

No, she wouldn't allow that. Her guards would be on Clarke before she snuck the second blow, and all this would be for nothing.

She grips tighter, feeling her pulse beat solidly in her fingertips. 

Roan will find them. It won’t be for nothing. 

She falls into the same uneasy sleep as before. When she wakes in the too-early morning her hand is bloodless and numb from the wrist. It takes a long time for sensation to return. Throughout, her fingers sometimes jerk and twist of their own accord, as if chasing the ghost of something that has long since slipped away.

 

 


End file.
